A survey of the 1,102 academy schools in the UK has attempted to find out who operates the catering, which company offers the supply route and how many pupils are on the roll of each.

During January and February 1,066 of the academies responded – a 97% completion rate.

The data reveal that 76% of academies are secondary level and more than a third are concentrated in the South East, a figure that rises to 39% when London is included.

The average number of pupils on roll at academies is 926, while the catering service arrangements showed that 40% were self-operated, 39% were contracted out and 18% operated by the local authority.

Among contractors Chartwells, the education catering arm of Compass, has 10% of the available contracts, followed by Sodexo with 4%.

Fourteen of the academies said they planned to change their catering arrangements in the next 6-12 months.

The survey showed that Brakes have the largest share of the route to market with 40%, followed by 3663 with 36%.

The survey results are revealed in full in the February issue of Educatering magazine.